1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates in general to a detecting apparatus with a photonic crystal structure, and more particularly to a detecting apparatus with a photonic crystal having molecularly imprinted sites used for quickly detecting a concentration of one of various kinds of target compounds.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, scientists have found some chemical substances would interfere with endocrine system, and thus have called them as endocrine disrupters (EDs) or endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Since the environmental hormone (or EDC) would generate artificial synthetic chemical substances disrupting endocrine of biological bodies, seriously affecting developments, growths, acts or procreations of biological bodies, and the environmental hormone has continually recycled in the environment, UNEP has made the environmental hormone a significant issue. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency of the country has investigated common plasticizers of Bisphenol A, nonyl phenol, etc, and has found that environmental distribution conditions of which are very serious.
Investigation data of the Environmental Protection Agency shows that headwater taken by water treatment plants in the country has environmental hormones of several ppbs. If the concentration of environmental hormone in water is monitored by a current environmental hormone analyzing equipment—a super-sensitive liquid chromatography-mass spectrophotometer (LC/MS) (such as a serial type LC/MS, biosensor, etc, it needs a time (including a time for a pretreatment) of several hours up to several days to obtain a result, far more than a time of 2-3 hours for a water purification process of the water treatment plant. Therefore, the water treatment plant could not monitor the headwater and identify the quality of the purified water immediately. Thus, a detecting apparatus for detecting environmental hormones in water easily and quickly for immediately confirming the concentration of the environmental hormone in the headwater and purified water for the water treatment plant is needed.
Besides the environmental hormones, other environmental pollutants or biochemical substances such as protein molecules, antibodies, etc. are all need to be detected by methods that are precise, quick and cheap. Detecting a target compound by using a conventional super-sensitive analysis instrument has disadvantages of complicated process, long analysis time, high cost, etc. For example, the instrument of the super-sensitive LC/MS is very expensive. When using the super-sensitive LC/MS, a test sample needs a pretreatment. The analyzing process is complicated. In addition, the quality specification has a high standard. Thus, using the super-sensitive LC/MS has a high threshold and incurs expensive cost. Moreover, the super-sensitive LC/MS has high analysis accuracy and can analyze many kinds of substances. However, the analysis time (including a time for pretreatment) cost at least ten hours. Thus, it is hard to investigate a distribution of the target compound instantaneously. Moreover, for example, biosensors also can be used for detecting environmental hormones. In addition, since the obtained result relates to total content representations, a composition of a single environmental hormone could not be distinguished. Thus, it is hard to trace a generating source and make prevention. Moreover, preserving biological molecules is not easy. Therefore, the lifetime is short, and the stability during the usage is limited. In addition, the analysis time (including a time for pretreatment) cost several ten hours. Thus, it is not a proper method for instantaneously monitoring environmental hormones.
Accordingly, it is need to develop a detecting apparatus for detecting each of target compounds with a low cost, simple analyzing process, and on-the-scene instantaneity for improving the detecting technique of chemical analyzing. For example, developing a detecting apparatus for environmental hormones would help the environmental protection organization to know well and control distributions of environmental hormones.